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HON. EDWARD H. ROLLINS, 

W 1^, , _ i mum ■ i w —ii ii i _ I, 

OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, 




DELIVERED 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

Thursday, May 22, 1862. 



Mr. ROLLINS, of New Hampshire, said : 
Mr. Speaker : It is not my purpose to en- 
ter upon this discussion and confine myself to 
the constitutional and legal aspects of this 
question. I do not profess to be deeply read 
in all the nice technicalities with which it is 
attempted to bewilder and obstruct our steps 
to a just and merited retribution upon treason 
and haughty and defiant rebellion. My course 
of life has been in other paths than among an- 
cient records and musty volumes of English 
decisions of the judges of the Crown. I prefer 
to live and walk in the present ; or when I do 
turn to look back, I choose to watch the steps 
of those of the great race to which we belong 
who moved forward and sought to use the cir- 
cumstances of their condition and times for 
their advantage and defence. I do not arrogate 
to ourselves a higher degree of wisdom than 
had the grea,t men who have gone before us, to 
deal with events that wheel in their courses 
across the steady round of our circuit, and 
startle nations with the glare of their train. I 
am grateful for the recorded heroism of these 
men, and am a willing student of the lessons 
they inscribed for us on every leaf of their lives 
wherein they stood stoutly up to meet new dan- 
gers and turn them drifting harmlessly away. 
1 rejoice, too, that as were the times so were 
the men they bore fitted to match the events 
born with them ; and I do not believe that our 
great mother, so big with the latter, is barren 
of heroes to grapple with the e ■ ents of this day. 
The world never looked upon a crisis more 
awful in its magnitude and fraught with more 
momentous consequences than the present. A 
more stubborn reality never stared a people in 
the face than now meets us front to front, and 
challenges us to encounter it. For long years 
has the power that has begotten this monster 
been nourishing its strength with the vitality 



'of the Republic, and sheltering itself under the 
guards of the Constitution that it had procured 
to be construed solely for its own convenience. 
It made decisions to be registered by the Su- 
preme Bench it had filled. It issued its de- 
crees to political conventions, and permitted 
them to choose whom it had designated for 
their candidates. It flaunted its banners em- 
blazoned with a popular motto, and cheated 
the people it juggled after they had done it- 
bidding. The last eight years of its adminis- 
tration of this Government, when Pierce and 
Buchanan were its ready instruments, were tha 
days of its reckless and headlong assaults upon 
plighted faith and old landmarks of adjusted 
differences. It flattered the occupant of the 
Chief Executive office in the Government with 
the hopes of a re-election, and used him to 
break down the barrier it had thirty years be- 
fore helped to erect, under the pretence of put- 
ting the question of popular institutions in the 
hands of the people, and then, using the same 
instrument, sought to force itself upon a people 
who hated it, by armed power and lawless cru- 
sades. Impunity was granted to its own out- 
rages, for the Administration dared not secure 
to the people the sovereignty it had promised, 
for that sovereignty would make the State free. 
Here was it first foiled. It could not manage 
the sovereigns as it had managed the Govern- 
ment, and freedom came off victorious in the 
couflict both with slavery and the Government. 
The man who had done its bidding, it spurned 
at Cincinnati, and cast him off, to choose a 
new servant who would be blind to all its op- 
erations — in whose very presence it might plot 
its contemplated treason. During his adminis- 
tration it finished its work, as it thought, and its 
first treason wm against the politic .hose 

great name it had used to make for itself op- 
portunities to plot its treason against the coun- 






e great leader of the Democ- 

„ might have made President, hut 

.. no more Presidents, and least of all 

It thought its time had come — that its 

...nemes were nicely laid. 

" I call the faith of gods and men to question, ■ 
The power is in our hands. * * * * 
There wants only to begin this business ; 
The issue is certain. 

" Let the long hid seeds 
Of treason * * * * now shoot forth in deeds 
Ranker than horror." 

There was now no longer question what was 
best to do, as when the thing was first con- 
ceived, hut what must be done. A pretext 
must be sought to inflame the minds of the 
people, and it was seen coming in the election 
of a northern man by northern votes, which 
slavery bad conspired to briDg about. The re- 
turns had hardly been counted, and while the 
wires were hot that flashed the intelligence to 
the remotest hamlet, South Carolina went out 
of the Union. The chief heads and guiding 
spirits of the conspiracy came daily into the 
Senate, or held seats in the blind and ague- 
shaking old man's Cabinet. Who ever looked 
upon such pernicious hypocrisy of treason ? — 
The different governments of the rebelling 
States were counseled and directed by men in 
these Halls, hindering by their votes any at- 
tempt to conciliate or to arrest treason ; who 
waited for the time, of which they were advised, 
when their States should declare themselves 
seceded, and then taking their mock farewells, 
flew to take the lead in this most cursed war. 
Well might some Cicero have said: 

" fio where thou mcan'st ; the ports are open. Forth ! 
The camp abroad wants thee, their chief, too long ; 
Lead with thee all thy troops out ; purge the city ; 
Draw dry that noisome and pernicious sink 
Which, left behind thee, would infect the world. 
Thou, Jupiter, 

Drive from thy altars, and all other temples 
And buildings of this city, from our walls, 
Lives, states, and fortunes of our citizens, 
This liend, this fury with his 'complices. 

" These known traitors 
Unto their country, thieves of Italy, 
Joined in so damn'd a league of mischief, thou 
Wilt with perpetual plagues, alive and dead, 
Funish for Rome ami save her innocent head." 

It is time that the Republic receive no loss ; 
or if too late for that, to drain dry the sources 
upon which this treason feeds. I am amazed 
at what I hear, that seems to hold so sacred 
all the rights that by every act of rebellion has 
been forfeited, and should be held as lost by 
every law of reason and every rule of self-de- 
fence. No man has the hardihood to deny that 
we should meet and overcome the rebels in 
battle. The utmost energies of the nation 
should he exerted to crush out this treason, 
even to draining the country to the last man and 
the last dollar of its treasure. But it is said our 
enemy's resources must remain untouched by 
us, to continue to nourish and keep alive the 
baleful body of this treason. Almost every 
family in the North has lent some son or father 
to the service of the Government. Alas! how 



many never to be returned. Every household 
stands ready to be drained by taxes to meet 
the expenses of this war, and yet we hesitate to 
lay our finger on a lock of cotton or an ounce 
of sugar or a grain of rice or a leaf of tobacco, 
lest it is not nominated in the bond. Thousands 
of negro slaves are forced to dig in trenches 
before our lines, exposed by the chivalry of the 
South to shot and shell, or to stand upon the 
ramparts and man the guns, while their mas- 
ters skulk behind the works. Bills of con- 
scription are passed by the rebel congress im- 
pressing every man of certain age into mili- 
tary service, while the slaves remain at home 
to raise supplies to feed them. This has been 
their boast, that all their men could be spared 
to fight, because their negroes could perform 
the toil of the plantation ; and yet we doubt 
and hesitate to declare these meii and women 
who thus supply their wants free from such ser- 
vitude, because the bond gives them " the 
pound of flesh." Is there no Portia, as a 
" learned judge," to interpret the law ? 
" Tarry a little ; there is something else. 

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood; 

The words expressly are, a pound of flesh: 

Take thou thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; 

But, in the cutting of it, if thou dost shed 

One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods 

Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate 

Unto the State of Venice." 

The framers of the Constitution may not 
have contemplated times like these. It could 
never have entered the minds of those who 
made it, that such perils as now threaten the 
nation would ever impend. They never dream- 
ed that hardly seventy years would pass away 
before that same instrument they were framing 
would be invoked to shield the men who would 
destroy it. One traitor, viler than the rest, re- 
mained behind to prouounce judgment on the 
acts of the President, and interpret the Con- 
stitution for us who are struggling to preserve 
the life of the nation. Is there no echo to his 
words about this Capitol ? Pity, if there are 
such who repeat his arguments, that they would 
not follow his example further. 

If there is anything that will tend to make 
the Constitution a less sacred thing in the minds 
of the people, it is the use that is made of it to 
shield those who are in open rebellion against 
it. This people will not endure that their 
limbs shall be bound with withes, but when 
they find them griping they will rend them like 
burnt flax. Is this Constitution like an old 
coat of mail, through which the enemy may 
thrust his weapon to the heart, and leave the 
victim to struggle in vain to withdraw it, be- 
cause its head is entangled in the meshea ? I 
have said that those who framed the Constitu- 
tion contemplated no such crisis as this, where 
whole States would commit treason. This was 
beyond the reach of their thoughts. Individu- 
als might u give aid and comfort to the enemy," 
but half the nation would not rise in arms to 
destroy it. Our fathers laid bold of the events 



and circumstances of their times, and from 
them built for themselves a Government and 
transmitted it to us, to shelter us in storms, 
and they entailed upon us no less the duty to 
guard it and ourselves from whatever new dan- 
ger might arise. If the dykes that are already 
raised to keep out the flood are not high enough 
for this tempest, shall we shrink aside and let 
the sea of desolation pour in, and then find that 
what was built for our protection keeps the land 
deluged, and will not let the flood retire ? Such, 
in my estimation, is the drift of the argument 
that forbids us to deal with this rebellion in a 
way to finish it, because with mole eyes you 
cannot see the specific clause in the Constitu- 
tion that gives us power to strip treason of its 
chief means of support. Three millions of 
bondmen bear upon their bent necks the chief 
weight of this night-hatched confederacy, and 
the Constitution is invoked to keep them there ! 

These slaves have hearts — they feel ; they 
have minds — they think. They know what all 
this war is about ; and what astonishment must 
seize them wheu they hear, as hear they do, 
that while we exhaust ourselves of vigorous 
men and uncounted millions of treasure to meet 
and overcome the revolted States, we still force 
them to serve our desperate foe. What despair 
will fill their bosoms when they feel that the 
tide of war that surges around and above them, 
terminate as it may, will only bury them deeper 
in the gloom of servitude. When hope, like a 
new sun, broke upon them through the rifted 
clouds of war, like human beings they turned 
to look whence came its beams. Their dark 
hands were lifted to heaven, and they blessed 
this northern light. May they not find it is the 
cold gleam of an iceberg 1 If you force this 
despair upon them, they will seek to make their 
servitude endurable by faithful devotion to their 
masters, and by their lives and their labors they 
will hope to gain some favor at the hand ot 
those whom they serve. It is not in human 
nature, and they have that quality, that they 
should sympathize with their masters in this 
war. They know it is waged to perpetuate the 
dismal night of their servitude, and we know 
with what trembling timidity they offer us their 
aid, and how grateful they are for the privilege 
of serving us. At the bayonet's point they are 
thrust forward to meet the unerring bullets of 
our sharpshooters, which their masters dare not 
encounter. The revolver glares at them with 
its circle of eyes behind, and the telescopic 
rifle fixes its steady glare upon them before. — 
We refuse to take advantage of the information 
they would bring, though we have never known 
it to lead us astray, and send them hack to be 
whipped to death for their faithfulness ; and all 
this we do because we are so scrupulous of the 
constitutional rights of slave owners. 

Their constitutional rights ! They scorned 
them all. They have trampled the Constitu- 
tion beneath the bloody hoofs of war, and we 



still seek to pack their breast-works with the 
rent parchment, so that our shot shall not reach 
the cause and support of this rebellion. 

I do not like the tone of the assumption that 
claims for one side of this House the especial 
merit of being defenders of the Constitution, 
nor do I think the method taken to have the 
claim, recognised by the great body of loyal 
people the best that could be adopted. The 
frequent iteration of devotion to that great in- 
strument, and the oft-repeated charges of un- 
faithfulness upon others, are a poor and empty 
satisfaction to the nation, who are asking why 
the Republic is not saved. The revolted States 
are but the enemies of the Government. The 
people regard them in no other light; and 
they look to us to crush them. They will stand 
by those who seek to accomplish this the most 
effectually. If we tell them we are so ham- 
pered by the Constitution that, although they 
may overcome their enemies in the field, we 
must leave their implacable foe possessed of all 
his resources, with the poison still treasured in 
his fang, we teach them to disrespect that in- 
strument, the most sacred of all legacies, save 
one, of departed time. It is so sacred that 
whatever threatens it must be destroyed. If 
it be men, they must pay the forfeit with their 
lives and all that they possess. If it be institu- 
tions, they must be overthrown. This Consti- 
tution must be preserved. There is in it some 
power of self-defence, and no tissue garb of 
sophistry can hide it, or fine-spun threads of 
logic bind it to the earth. Let it grapple 
with its foe till in its grasp no sign of life shall 
animate the body of this treason. 

All the strong guarantees of English liberty 
were obtained by slow degrees as the times 
gave opportunity. Magna Charta was wrested 
from King John by the stout barons and be- 
came a new feature in the English constitution, 
which narowed the prerogative of the Crown. 
A law was made to punish Stafford, the supple 
minister of Charle3 I, with the loss of his head. 
Stern old Hamden scrupled not to meet the 
necessities of the times, and it was thought, u if 
justice in the whole range of its wide armory 
contained one weapon which could pierce the 
enemy of the people, that weapon his pursuers 
were bound before God and man to employ." 
It is a significant fact, that while Charles and 
his ministers were attempting to overthrow the 
constitution of his realm, Parliament forced 
from him stronger muniments of liberty that in 
peaceful reigns would have required centuries 
to build ; and when he attempted to violate his 
royal pledges it cost him his head. During the 
time of the civil wars the progress of liberty 
was not always forward. Sometimes it went 
backward; but after the storm had swept past, 
it stood far advanced. While the flux and re- 
flux of opinion went on, the cause of public 
liberty was steadily gaining, and the seeds it 
scattered when the suriace of human society 



-was turned up as with a plow-share have sprung 
to full growth, and dropped their fruit even here 
upon our shores. 

There can be no question that we have 
the right to use all the means iu our power to 
subdue, annihilate, root out, and forever sweep 
away from this earth this most monstrous re- 
bellion, and to scatter its seeds where the pow- 
er to germinate can never reach. To deny this 
is to outlaw ourselves from the protection given 
to all men by the law of self-defence. We strip 
ourselves of the armor which in times of unu- 
sual peril like the present we have a right, and 
it is our duty, to wear. We have wrung our 
energies till they are almost ready to snap to 
meet force with force. We realize the fabulous 
numbers of ancient wars in the hosts that fill 
our camps in almost unbroken line from the 
Atlantic coast to the shadow of the Rocky 
mountains. The tents of our soldiers, like the 
white caps of the ocean waves, stretch all along 
our shores, from the capes of the Chesapeake 
to the mouths of the Mississippi. The sea 
groans with the weight of our Navy, which 
none but a Neptune could have launched in so 
short a time. Do we realize that all this great 
multitude of men have been drawn from some 
peaceful branch of industry, and have dropped 
the implements of agriculture and mechanic 
arts to rust in idleness, while they wield the 
weapons of war, which they will not lay down 
till our enemy is conquered? If you would 
shorten the period when they can return once 
more to their natural avocations, then I say to 
you exhaust your enemy of all his resources, 
and leave him nothing, if he still persist, but 
the empty air to feed upon. 

I give to this measure of confiscation my 
hearty support, because I believe it will do 
much to accomplish the end we all profess to 
desire. I know full well what this bill means. 
Our enemies knew what confiscation means 
when they turned the $300,000,000 of indebt- 
edness of their own people to the North into 
their own coffers, and seized every dollar of 
loyal men living in their midst, and every tan- 
gible piece of property that Northern men had 
accumulated anywhere among them, all to be 
used in support of their unrighteous cause. 
And yet we are told that a measure of this 
kind will make our foes desperate ! To what 
point of desperation can they go further thau 
they have already reached ? To what extremes 
of barbarous warfare can they descend and find 
a lower deep? What Golgotha can exceed 
Manassas ? What more horrid forms can look 
through the smoke of battle than brandished 
the scalping-knife about the heads of our 
wounded soldiers at Pea Ridge ? What lazar- 
house can be more infectious than the gloomy 
prisons of our soldiers at Richmond ? Have 
they not bayoneted our soldiers, impressed Union 
men into their wicked service, driven loyal 
citizens from their homes, or left them bleeding 



by their own hearthstone? Do I exaggerate, 
or set down aught in malice ? Then listen to 
Senator Johnson's description of the hellish 
atrocities committed by these conspirators in 
Tennessee : 

" Your Government is paralyzed; your Government is 
powerless; that which you have called a Government is a 
dream, an idle thing. You thought you had a Government, 
but you have none. My people arc appealing to you for 
protection under the Constitution. They are arrested by 
hundreds and by thousands; they are dragged away from 
their homes and incarcerated in dungeons. They ask you 
lor protection. Why do you not give it 1 Some of them are 
lying chained in their lonely prison-house. The only re- 
sponse to their murmur is the rattling and clanking of tha 
chains that bind their limbs. The only response to their 
appeals is the grating of the hinges of their dungeon. When 
we ask for help under the Constitution, we are told that the 
Government has no power to enforce the laws. Our people 
are oppressed and down-trodden, and you give them no rem- 
edy. They were taught to love and respect the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. What is their condition to-day? 
They are hunted and pursued like the beasts of the forest 
"by the secession and disunion hordes who are enforcing 
their doctrine of coercion. Xliey ai'e shot or hung for no 
crime save a desire to stand by the Constitution of the Uni- 
ted States. Helpless children and innocent females are 
murdered in cold blood. Our men are hung, and their bodies 
left upon the gibbet. They are shot and [eft lying in the 
gorges of the mountains, not even thrown into the caves, 
there "to lie, but are left exposed to pass through all the 
loathsome stages of decomposition, or. to be devoured by 
the birds of prey. We appeal for protection, and are told 
by the Senator "from Indiana, and others, ' we cannot en- 
force the laws; we arc against the entire coercive policy.' 
Do you not hear their groans ? Do you not hear their cries ? 
Do you not hear the shrieks of oppressed and down-trodden 
women and children? Sir, their tones ring out so loud 
and clear that even listening angels look from heaven in 
pity." 

But I forbear to add more ; humanity shrinks 
from the contemplation of scenes like these. 

Confiscation will not prolong the struggle or 
make the rebels more determined than they 
now are. They caunot possibly be more bitter 
and revengeful than they have been. They 
know that they richly merit and will receive-all 
the penalties that follow treason. The leaders, 
from the outset, expected, in the event of de- 
feat, that they would be punished as traitors. 
Have they calculated upon anything less? Do 
they anticipate any other treatment than such 
as they deserve ? Is it presumed by the Rep- 
resentatives of the people that an act confisca- 
ting immediately the property of leading rebels, 
and of all other persons who shall not, within 
sixty days after public warning and proclama- 
tion duly given and made by the President of 
the United States, cease to aid, countenance, 
and abet this rebellion, and return to their al- 
legiance to the United States, can more com- 
pletely infuriate the rebels ? What new scheme 
of iniquity can they devise ? What new infer- 
nal machine can they invent? Their cruel 
desolation of the land, with its homes and fire- 
sides, and their fiendish destruction of human 
life, have thus far been limited only by their 
power and not by their inclination. Make them 
desperate ! Desperation had reached its height 
when they first rebelled. They were not igno- 
rant of the consequences that would follow if 
they failed, and the full retribution of their 
crimes should seem so awful that they will call 



on the rocks and mountains to hide them from 
its wrath. 

Our country! The youngest birth of time 
springing from between the seas to meet on 
either hand the hopeful gaze of the older na- 
tions. Good men, great men, little less than 
commissoned from on high, redeemed it from 
its youthful thrall and gave it to the world. 
Millions have sought its shores and found not 
its promise vain. Still young in years — so 
young that there still live venerable men who 
remember its infancy, and weep at its present 
peril — it has become a giant, so that it need 
not fear, though it excite the envy of its elders. 
The world never knew such prosperity as our 
people had enjoyed under its protection. All 
the arts that benefit mankind and adorn the 
age had sprung up as if indigenous to the soil. 
Literature and learning had achieved such tri- 
umphs that many nations knew not their own 
history till they learned it from American au- 
thors. The indomitable energy of our people 
had harnessed all the elements to do service 
for them, and then divulged the secret of taming 
them to others. But why enumerate? You 
read the story of our greatness everywhere, in 
hamlet and in town, on hillside and in valley, 
and on the wide-spreading prairie. 

And now what do we see? Parricidal hands 
have sought to destroy this Government, and 
nothing now is left for us but duly, stern, un- 
wavering duty. Forbearance is no longer vir- 
tue. It is exhausted. It is worn out by long 
years of exercise. We listened to its call when 
it besought us to hunt the despairing fugitive ; 
we were urged to acquiesce when it asked us 
to consent to the overthrow of the Missouri 
compromise. Our patience was invoked when 
we were told that. we must not coerce a State to 
return after she had declared herself out of the 
Union, ere yet the storm of iron broke on Sum- 
ter. And now that war is inaugurated by the 
thunder of rebel cannon against those walls, 
and we see it blazing like volcanoes on count- 
less battle-fields, from Manassas to New Or- 
leans, the same men — in my own State as well 
as elsewhere — who insisted that we could not 
coerce a State, declare that the death-knell of 
the Uuion is sounded the moment we adopt a 
measure of this kind. Their predictions have 
little terror to me, for I remember how the 
President's peoclamation was defied by States 
whish would not assist to suhju.gate their sisters, 
and which now vaunt themselves so true to the 
Union. I have no fear for " a war within a 
war," for the good sense of every loyal State 
will comprehend the wisdom of this measure 
in less time than was required to justify the 
wholesome ministrations of war. I do not be- 
lieve the counsels then given were wise ; and 
whatever may dictate those of to-day, I cannot 
largely heed them. 

To resist a State in its attempts to separate 
from the Union, was declared to be unconstitu- 



tional; just as now it is urged that a measure 
to confiscate the property of rebels is unconsti- 
tutional. I cannot be moved, by this repeti- 
tion of the old argument, from the plain dic- 
tates of common sense. We saved the Consti- 
tution by disregarding the cry one year ago, 
and we will impregnably fortify it to-day by 
stripping rebellion of its means of threatening 
it again. 

This measure proposes to take the property 
of all the leaders and instigators of this war, 
and to turn it over to the Government. To 
what vast sums the amount thus to be realized 
will swell, I cannot pretend to tell. The long 
array of figures which are sometimes used to 
frighten us to forbear, do not alarm me. I only 
hope that it will help to lighten the great bur- 
den of taxation that must be laid upon our peo- 
ple; and I would not greatly fear if it were 
sufficient to lift the entire load from their necks. 
If my neighbor bring a suit against me in our 
courts, (I am not a lawyer; I may be mistaken,) 
and if it is shown that it is not founded in law, 
or that the claim is not just, execution issues 
against him for all the legal costs of the action 
to which I have been subjected, and he finds 
his goods attached to satisfy the judgment. — 
This is a great "trial by battle." Before the 
issue is reached our enemy has taken our goods 
wherever he could find them, and uses them to 
cover the expenses of the war, and now turns 
upon us and denies that we can do the same, 
because it is not constitutional. Wondrous 
felicity of construction, that enables the ene- 
mies of the Constitution to shield themselves 
behind the bulwarks that they are attempting 
to batter down ! They strip us of our shield 
and helmet and hang them to the point of our 
weapons, and strike at our naked bosoms. But 
in despite of all this, in spite of all their own 
natural resources, and in spite of all they have 
stolen, our blows fall like tempests on their 
heads, and they rly like their own carrion buz- 
zards at the swoop of our standard-eagles. 

Is it contended that this bill will be inopera- 
tive? My an'swer is, that the Missouri rebel, 
the Kentucky rebel, the Maryland rebel, the 
Tennessee rebel, ay, the Virginia rebel and the 
Louisiana rebel, and the rebel of what State 
not? who are still fighting, or running away to 
fight some other day, all see us in possession of 
what they have left behind, and we have only 
to take it and it is ours. And why not ? They 
are seeking to destroy the Government that pro- 
tected them in all that they possessed, and by 
that act, by all the laws of justice, that protec- 
tion is forfeited. Should he who lingered in 
these Halls to plead the constitutional rights of 
rebels, as a rebel best might, and who crept 
about these passages to spy some hope of sym- 
pathy from congenial spirits, and spent the hot 
nights of July and August in seeking out some 
congregated haunts of conspirators, return to 
Kentucky, he can find ready argument to show 



6 



that all tbe goods and chattels that he left should 
still remain sacredly his own. The Arkansas 
poet — ah ! slavery has found its poet at last — 
smouched with the salutations of his painted 
savages, can return to his home and find the 
constitutional fetters still on his slaves, and his 
gratitude will not be wanting to those who kept 
them there. 

By refusing to pass this bill of confiscation 
you put a premium upon treason ; for now no 
man can give utterance to a word of loyalty in 
any State yet held by the conspirators, who is 
not at once dispossessed of all he has and driv- 
en a wanderer and an exile from his home, 
while if he but profess allegiance to the rebel 
government his property remains untouched. 
Faithful as he may be to his country, he sees 
that while he is left naked, his disloyal neigh- 
bor is protected in all he holds, though he gives 
its use to overthrow the Government under 
which he has accumulated all he possesses. 
South Carolina is secure to send all her men to 
the field to swell the mad hosts of our foe, for 
if at any time she tire in the fight, she has on- 
ly to return to professed allegiance and find all 
her institutions still unimpaired, and the prop- 
erty of all her citizens under safe guard, and 
whole to her hands. She may use it all to feed 
the fires of this unrighteous war, but we dare 
not touch a single dollar of it to turn to our 
own service. Missouri has been made desolate 
by the hordes of treason because she was so 
loyal. Had she given an undivided support to 
the confederacy of traitors, we should grant to 
her complete immunity. 

This measure proposes to give immediate 
effect to confiscation, with a view to end the 
war with all possible dispatch. It not only pro- 
vides that after the war is over the property of 
rebels, if any remain, shall be taken from them 
in punishment of their great crimes, but it pro- 
poses to exhaust and punish both at once ; to 
dry up the fountains upon which this rebellion 
feeds, and turn the supplies into our own stores, 
and thus make the war its own avenger and 
the minister of its own retributive justice. Any 
other plan of confiscation will only tend to pro- 
long the war, for if confiscation be contingent 
upon its close, the desperate hope of putting off 
the day of retribution, and the knowledge that 
peace will only bring to them poverty and want, 
will give stubbornness to the hate of these in- 
furiate men. Better that they should feel that 
all the terrible consequences of this war march 
in its train, and that punishment treads close 
upon the heels of crime. 

It is objected that all the powers assumed by 
Congress in this bill belong to the President. 
Do men know the fearful height to which they 
elevate a single man ? I would hardly be will- 
ing to trust him on such a dizzy eminence, 
though I do not believe the man lives that could 
walk it with a steadier step than Abraham Lin- 
coln ; and if it were necessary he would not 



shrink from the attempt. But I believe he looks 
to us for support, and waits anxiously for our 
approving voice. We say to him that he shall 
cause the estate and property and moneys, 
stocks, credits, and effects of persons in rebel- 
lion to be seized, to the end that they may be 
confiscated and condemned to the use of the 
United States. And if there be a doubt in his 
mind in relation to the unlimited powers which 
men say belong to him, we at once, by this act, 
assume our share of the responsibility and 
strengthen his purpose to eud the war at a blow, 
which, while it crushes the rebellion, at the 
same time destroys the support and extin- 
guishes the cause. I am distrustful of that 
policy which seeks to shift the responsibility 
upon other men's shoulders. If anything is fit 
to be done, I am willing to bear my part; and 
I would assist our over-burdened President by 
the prompt and fearless exercise of all those 
powers the Constitution confers upon us. 

But there is one species of pretended prop- 
erty for which a special immunity is claimed ; 
of which no height or depth of treason could 
work a forfeiture. I mean property in man. 
There seems to me a strange path by which to 
arrive at this conclusion, as if whatever is held 
by virtue of a violation of natural right is more 
sacred than that which is possessed hy that law 
which God ordained when He gave to man " do- 
minion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the 
earth, and over every creeping thing that creep- 
eth upon the earth." The more monstrous the 
usurpation by whvjh this right of human prop- 
erty is claimed, the higher sanctity fences it 
about, and I know no other ground for this im- 
munity than that what is founded on a wrong 
no wrong can overthrow! What we possess by 
natural right, follow but in that straight path, 
and nothing can impair it. What we have 
seized by wrongful might, the grosser is the 
crime by which we seek to hold it, the surer is 
our grasp upon it! 

What we witness to day should not surprise 
us. This rebellion is the legitimate consequence 
of slavery. It has put itself upon its defence 
against the common sentiment of the world and 
against this Government, which it could no 
longer drag to its support. The natural con- 
dition of slavery is war. Its first victims are 
captives taken in war. It supplies its exhausted 
stock by fomenting war among the tribes from 
which it would replenish itself. True, it con- 
forms to the sentiment of civilization, and al- 
lows treaties to be made to suppress its trade, 
but the ships it seuds to catch the pirates are 
seldom found at the points where the slave- 
trader lurks. It appeals to the avarice of un- 
principled men to engage in the traffic, and 
then taunts the whole people with the crime. 
It submitted to have ingrafted upon the stat- 
ute-book of the Government laws punishing 
with death all persons engaged in the slave 



trade, but, while it controlled that Government, 
no person was convicted of the offence and paid 
the penalty. 

In times of peace it found it could not cope 
with freedom. In the First Congress, Virginia 
had twenty-three Representatives and New 
York thirteen. South Carolina originally 
counted in the lower House as five to sixty-five; 
now she counts as five to the whole number en- 
titled to seats. With a domain exceeding that 
of the free States, with a fertility of soil and a 
mildness of climate almost unequaled on the 
face of the earth, the slave States have not been 
able to keep pace in growth of population with 
the free States. Slavery became jealous of 
freedom, which, added to its intense hate, has 
produced this war. It is vain to tell me that 
the ambition of this man or that incited him to 
plot for the destruction of this Government — 
that ambition was fired by slavery. It is vain 
to tell me that political power was passing away 
from one section of the country — slavery could 
brook no rival ; it must sit upon the throne 
alone. There is no act, in the whole category 
of crimes that have culminated in this rebellion, 
that slavery did not inspire. It has sought to 
build a government of its own. If its success 
were among the things possible, slavery, and 
slavery alone, would be the preamble and the 
close of its constitution. Its laws would be 
framed to extend and perpetuate slavery. Its 
tariffs would be imposed to protect it, and its 
people taxed to feed it. This is the enemy we 
have to meet and conquer. This country has 
no other that it need fear; and while it lives, 
it will be a perpetual terror. 

We see its hosts fleeing, its towns surrender- 
ing, its sea monsters exploding and strewing 
its rivers with the rent fragments o. ? their iron 
shells. Our troops are victorious everywhere, 
and so rapid are the events of triumphant war 
that our minds are confused with the succession 
of dispatches that leap along the wires. And 
yet, what do we behold ? A frantic effort made 
to save from deserved destruction the source 
and cause of our peril, 

An address recently issued, quite numerous- 
ly signed by the members of this House, indi- 
cates that, in the judgment of these gentlemen, 
there is a pressing necessity for the reorgani- 
zation of the Democratic party. Their platform 
of principles, as enunciated and subscribed to 
by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Vallandu; 
ham] and others, breathes bitter and unquali- 
fied nostility to the Republican party, the mem 
bers of which it denounces as abolitionists. It 
proposes to " kill abolition," while it treats 
armed rebellion very tenderly, hurling no wrath- 
ful invectives against the minions of slave r y, 
who^e forces are marshaled to destroy the litr- 
of the Republic. On the 4th of March, 1853, 
this party, which it is now sought to resusci- 
tate and reorganize, took control of the national 
Government from the hands of Mr. Fillmore, 



while peace and quiet reigned supreme through- 
out the land, the leaders promising that 
this repose should not be disturbed by any act 
of theirs. Having had possesion of the Gov- 
ernment for eight years under Pierce and 
Buchanan, they resigned its control to the di- 
rection of Abraham Lincoln, with forts, arse- 
nals, ships, and mints in a large section of the 
country in the keeping of armed rebels, civil 
war being thus inaugurated, and the Republic 
brought to the very verge of ruin. It found 
the nation at peace ; and left it to n, dissever- 
ed, in belligerent fragments. Had the election 
of November, 1860, resulted differently, so that 
these same leaders would have retained possess- 
ion of the Government for four years longer, 
and rushed the country on with like speed 
towards destruction, the conspirators would 
have secured complete possession of the Army 
and Navy, and all the available arms and mu- 
nitions of war, and there would have been lit- 
tle hope that the power of loyal men could 
prevent a permanent disruption of the Union. 
The overthrow of this party was not accom- 
plished an hour too soon. The Union will now 
be saved intact ; otherwise it might have perish- 
ed. 

It is now proposed to commence the work of 
reorganizing the Democratic party for the pur- 
pose of saving the Constitution and the Union, 
while yet the South and controlling end of the 
party is waging a cruel war for the destruction 
of both the Conrtitution and the Union. Well, 
let them to their labors with d licence, for the 
task before them is so huge that it will require 
most herculean efforts to accomplish the result 
they desire. The people will no longer be de- 
ceived. One year of the administration of 
Abraham Lincoln has scattered the enemies of 
the Republic like leaves before the tempest. If 
the success of our arms, the utter rout of our 
foe, can entitle a Government to the cordial 
support of a people, what can be asked more? 
But this unexampled success has endangered 
a peculiar institution, and the Democratic party 
is summoned to save it. Three days more of 
successes, and the danger seems more imminent; 
and the conservative men of all parties are 
called together to ignore party and save — what? 
not the country, surely; for the victories of our 
army and navy almost outrun time, and seize 
the event before. In the middle or' a week the 
Democratic party could save the nation; but 
at its close it requires the sacrifice of all par- 
ties to save the country. This rapid change of 
tactics must imply great danger threatening 
somewhere ; but the people will hardly be able 
to discover that the danger to the country is 
increased while they see the forts and arsenals 
'" repossessed " and the national s'andard re- 
turning to plant itself in every Scare of the 
Union. No, the danger does not threaten the 
country, but slavery totters to its overthrow. 
The great criminal, the implacable foe of the 



k. 



8 



J 



nation, is beaten everywhere, and then the dan- 
ger of the country is so great that especial at- 
tempts are made to save it by party and no- 
party organizations. But this will never do. 
The Union is not saved by such methods. 
Those are not the physicians that can heal the 
sick, feverish nation, who would keep the can- 
cer gnawing at the vitals. The old practice of 
nursing the disease will not answer. The pa- 
tient will be restored to uncommon health and 
strength, and in time no trace of the disease be 
left. This rebellion cannot be put down by 
soft words and lenient measures. We extend- 
ed the olive branch full too long, until our flag 
was disgraced and war commenced by the mad 
conspirators. We must, by all the means at 
our command, strike down the power of rebels 
to assail us, and then the work is done. They 
can build less iron-clad gunboats, now that we 
have Norfolk. They can cast less columbiads. 
build less steam rams, and obtain less sugar to 
sweeten the bitter cup of treason, now that we 
have New Orleans; and when we have Rich- 
mond and Corinth, the back-bone of the rebel- 
lion will be broken. 



The path of duty never shone so bright for a 
people as it does for us today. As we advance 
it grows brighter. The President's message 
recommending; emancipation was the rending 
of the vail. The gift of freedom to a few poor, 
but oh ! how grateful, recipients, has returned 
to bless the hearts of millions who bestowed it. 
A deed more rich in virtue, more fruitful in the 
approving of conscience, more blessed with the 
smiles of Almighty God, stands not oh the 
records of this nation. The whole ample do- 
main of the Territories will soon be declared 
free, and that for which we have labored for 
many years is about to be accomplished. I do 
not know how much may be effected by legis- 
lation to redeem a race from bondage whose 
enslavement is the crime for which we suffer. 
The providences of God are brought about 
through courses that are not always plain to 
mortal eye, and yet to them there is no " vari- 
ableness or shadow of turning," and our path 
to-day lies by their side. Events are marching 
on. Happy is that people who blind not their 
eyes to the " cloud by day and the pillar of fire 
by night." 

LIBRARY OF CONGRE 




WASHINGTON, D. C. 

SCAMMELL & CO. PRINTERS, CORNER OF SECOND STREET AND INDIANA AVENUE, JIJIRD FLOOR' 

1862. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 028 253 



pH8J 



